I've noticed several quite good koans (very short little zen-ish riddles intended to help the ponderer find inner-stillness) posted under Perl Poetry and/or Meditations (example: Is garbage collection the end?)-- which to me seems to indicate that there isn't really a place for the perl koan (both the koan written in perl and the koan written about perl) as of yet. What do some other monks think about creating a node just for these little sublime-snippets-of-inner-peace?

The Autonomic Pilot; it's FunkyTown, babe.

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RE: JAPK (Just Another Perl Koan)
by awwaiid (Friar) on Jun 28, 2000 at 03:46 UTC

    haha... 

    sub poem{return $me++;}
$is = (poem == poem) ? "is" : "is not";
print "A poem $is a poem (or is it?).\n";

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[d/l]
RE: JAPK (Just Another Perl Koan)
by Adam (Vicar) on Jun 28, 2000 at 00:36 UTC
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RE: JAPK (Just Another Perl Koan)
by KM (Priest) on Jun 28, 2000 at 00:46 UTC
    Since one is supposed to meditate on a koan, I would think that Meditations would be the fitting place to post koans (or kong-an). I wouldn't think Perl Poetry (although I may have posted one there) is the right place, since koans are not poems. So, where will the Perl Parables go? ;)

    Cheers,
    KM

[reply]

      I think you should ask perl. 

      print "A Perl Koan is a ",(rand)?'poem.':'meditation.';

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[d/l]
      I don't think Meditations is the right place. Zazen is forgetting one's self, and my understanding is that koan are simply signposts. On the other hand, many koan are in fact classified as poems such as:
      At our moonviewing party
      there is no one
      with a beautiful face.
      Basho.

      Poetry also seems to be a catchall for non-technical artistic endeavors. Though personally I would like to see a Zen theme, or node where things were renamed and organized (Meditations->Zazen), etc.

      --
      perl -pew "s/\b;([mnst])/'$1/g"

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RE: JAPK (Just Another Perl Koan)
by mcwee (Pilgrim) on Jun 28, 2000 at 21:03 UTC
    I lean towards agreeing with KM, that koans properly belong under Meditations. But, I note that 1) our Meditations usually take the form of small to mid-size essays, while the koan is usually a couple-liner (and thus the subkect of an entirely different kind of mental-rumination) and 2) the koan lends itself towards the compact, sublime brevity of the perl poem. Thus my conundrum: my brain says that the koan belongs with Meditations, but my aesthetic heart insists that they are more comfortably ranked with Perl Poetry.

    Which is all to say that I've got a WAY LOT of time on my hands here, at work, where the connections are T1 and the supervision lax.

    The Autonomic Pilot; it's FunkyTown, babe.

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RE: JAPK (Just Another Perl Koan)
by redmist (Deacon) on Jun 28, 2000 at 07:18 UTC
    I concur with KM that they should go under Meditations.
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